Solving the Mystery of the Dress

Hey guys, pk here,

I'm solving this stupid dress thing once and for all with the power of science!

Ok, just to get this out of the way once and for all, the dress is blue and black, but there is a valid reason behind why its perceived as white and gold. It all lies in the eye. Now personally I think that there are two things affecting this; one being the scientific theory that every human eye sees a different shade of color to one another, which has proven, and two being Color Constancy, which has been proven.

Color Constancy is a pretty simple thing in all aspects. Basically Color Constancy says that, for any object that projects a shadow, like this one:



Then the human brain thinks: "Oh, those colors inside the shadow are covered by the shadow, therefore they need to be darker!" And so, the brain fills in all the detail. But here's the thing, your eye guesses a lot of the time; as the retina was evolved to focus on one thing at a time, it processes things in a cone shape, so therefore it guesses from memory to fill in the rest of your peripheral vision. Seriously, go focus on something in the room you're in, and try to make out what's at the very far right of your vision.

Therefore, combining Color Constancy and the Science of the Retina, what if I told you that the brown on the top, and the orange on the side were the same color? Let's take away all the other cubes shall we?


And bingo. That's science for you. To tie this back into the dress...its blue and black, no doubts about it. There are other factors that come into play however. Its been proven that it can also do with your perception of light. Those of you who see White and Gold, your brain sees it in a natural light, such as sunlight coming through a window. Those of you, including myself, who see blue and black perceive it in an artificial light, as in a shop window light.

And finally, a few more things that finalise it, the quality of the camera - probably didn't have an extensive color range in it; poor white balancing and Photoshop - a failure to correct white balance causes colors to be offscale and it could have been altered in Photoshop, and finally, I mean come on guys the girl who bought the dress in the first place took a picture clearly showing it was Blue and Black, see:



okokok now that this has been proven, can we no longer have any more posts about this damn dress.

Thanks,
Elliot

 

that;s great

 

Have you been watching brain games?

 

Nope, he has been watching ASAP Science :)

 

I like how could a piece of cloth blow world minds! >. <